Grop Of Seven

The Group of Seven was founded in 1920 as an organization of self-proclaimed modern artists. The original members - Franklin CARMICHAEL, Lawren HARRIS, A.Y. JACKSON, Franz JOHNSTON, Arthur LISMER, J.E.H. MACDONALD and F.H. VARLEY - befriended each other in Toronto between 1911 and 1913. All except Harris, who was independently wealthy, made their living as commercial artists, and several of them even worked together in the same shop. Tom THOMSON, another commercial artist, was included in this circle of friends, but since he died in 1917 he never became a member of the Group. He was important to the other artists, however, for he was an avid outdoors man and awakened their interest in painting the rugged northern Ontario landscape.
Painting The Group were not exclusively landscape painters, and it was only after their first exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1920 that they began to identify themselves as a landscape school.